by Sam Hawke
Atrapis
DESCRIPTION: Dull green herb with small yellow flowers and fine black seeds, very common. All parts, especially seeds and flowers, are poisonous in large doses. Useful as a blood-borne antidote to poisons that slow heart rate (such as bluehood), and in surgery to decrease salivation. Formerly used as a recreational drug.
SYMPTOMS: Blurred vision, loss of balance, dilated pupils, reaction to light, dry mouth, and potentially extreme confusion, dissociative hallucinations, and excitation, especially among the elderly.
PROOFING CUES: Has biting, crisp taste and noticeably dries mouth. Smell is sharp and tart.
22
Kalina
The harsh cry of a firebird jolted me awake. I blinked up at the sky, catching a glimpse of the scarlet underwing of the big bird of prey as it wheeled overhead, suddenly conscious of the dozens of things that should have kept me awake and hadn’t: the rickety, jolting passage of the cart in which I rode, my head lolling at an awkward angle, the brightness of the sky.
My left side prickled painfully as I straightened. It took a moment to orient myself and realize the oku had continued to plod on down the road as I’d slept. The cart had only been intended as a chance to rest my legs and lungs so I could continue on foot again, but apparently the stress of the night had beaten my resolve.
Ravenous, I fumbled in my pack for supplies and extracted some fish jerky. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for the meager quantities in my pack. My foraging attempts had made plain that while I had an excellent understanding of which plants not to eat, I had none concerning those that were safe, let alone pleasant. Jovan doubtless had memorized entire books on native plants and would probably be able to make a sumptuous meal from roots and moss. I almost smiled, but the thought of my brother was too painful. What had he thought when he’d found my letter? He’d think I’m dead. His whole family and his best friend, all dead.
Shaking my head, I distracted myself from melodramatic dwelling by trying to determine our location. The sun was low and the homogeneous scenery gave me no clue how far we’d traveled. I pulled up the beast and climbed out, leading it off the road. The wheels caught quickly in gnarled plants and, despite my tugging, it was soon apparent my new friend would be no good off-road.
Panting, resting my forearms on the placid animal, I looked back at the road and then at the difficult path over the wilds. The choice knotted my stomach. I’d make better time and could preserve my energy with the wagon, but it would mean trusting my safety to the road.
“I’m sorry, girl,” I said to the oku. “You’ll have to find your own way home.” I patted the beast and then, breathing deeply, set off across the hills.
Dumbcane
DESCRIPTION: Species of giant grass with strong, supple canes suitable for drying for building material. Grows rows of fine, clear, needle-shaped crystals, which are poisonous on piercing the skin. Crushed crystals removed from cane in production are poisonous if ingested (not soluble).
SYMPTOMS: Intense burning irritation, immobility of the tongue, mouth, and throat; swelling can block breathing if severe enough.
PROOFING CUES: Tingling in tongue and lips, faint astringent smell reminiscent of urine, gritty texture in most foods.
23
Jovan
Vivid dreams stripped my sleep of restfulness. When I awoke to Tain’s babbling and thrashing my skin dripped with sweat and my palms bore little crescent marks from my fingernails. My muscles felt tense, as if I’d run a race rather than slept for hours. This was my fourth night of sleeping here by Tain’s bed. Four long, cold days, while the rebels had exercised their patience and in which I’d learned nothing new about Eliska or Marco, and exchanged nothing but awkward silence with Hadrea. I avoided her as diligently as she did me. I tried not to think about Kalina but it was hard when I’d never felt so lonely in my life.
I tried to rub the images from my dreams away from my eyes. Yet again, I’d been haunted by brown sacks and arrow-flecked corpses. The dreams left me sick and anxious, knowing I was missing something important, but unable to understand their significance.
I sat up when Tain did. He pressed against the wall, his head jerking around, eyes wide. “Jov?” he whispered, hoarse. “Jov, is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, rubbing my eyes and finding a stool by his bed. “I’m here. You’re all right.”
His breath hitched as he reached a hand out, trembling. “Jov, what have they done to you?” His eyes scanned me, mouth working, as if he visually catalogued a score of wounds.
“I’m fine.” I went to take his hand, but he snatched his back with a shriek.
“Your hand!” he cried. “Fortunes, Jov! What have they done?” He cried, heavy wracking sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m going to be all right. Just relax. It’s over now, Tain.”
He continued to sob, but when I touched his shoulders this time he didn’t recoil. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “Oh, Lini.”
My head snapped up and my hands dropped from his shoulders as if pulled by invisible strings. My mouth went dry.
When he looked up this time, some of the wildness had left his eyes. “Lini,” Tain said again. “She’s gone, isn’t she? She said she was going to go to the army and find help. She thought I was going to die, and she said goodbye.” He squeezed his eyes shut as though even looking at me hurt. “It was like I was underwater. I could hear her but I couldn’t say anything. And the next thing I remember, she was gone.”
My lungs wouldn’t fill properly. I tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he begged, but all I could do was shake my head, mute.
He dropped his head back against the wall with a dull thud, face wet with tears. “Tell me.”
My voice came out tight and high as I told him what I knew. I couldn’t keep the anger and shame out of my voice but he seemed not to notice, barely looking at me as he digested it. Then he gave me a weak attempt at a smile. “She was right, though, the west bank’s probably not patrolled. If she wasn’t seen in the river…”
“She probably was, if she didn’t drown first,” I said harshly, his stupid hope like bellows on the flames of my rage. “But even if she wasn’t, the rebels presumably control all the estates. Do you think a lone Silastian woman could get through all those villages without being seen? Maybe someone with the physical strength—” I had to tear my gaze away and stare at the wall, willing myself not to finish the accusation.
“Jov, I’m sorry,” he said, reaching a hand toward me and letting it drop as it was ignored. “You know I’d never have let her go if I’d been able to do anything. This is the longest I can remember being awake since the poisoning. Honor-down, I don’t even know how much time’s passed.”
My face felt stiff as I answered. “Five days.” I almost hated him for crying, when I hadn’t. Couldn’t.
“And I’m going to live?” He stared down at his own hands and chest as if they belonged to someone else. “How? What happened?”
“You’ve been chewing feverhead,” I said. “It stopped your body from absorbing the poison, and now it’s just trying to repair. I don’t know how much damage it did before we got to it, though.” He likely had permanent digestive and breathing problems in his future even if he didn’t succumb to an infection or some other secondary condition in the short term. It took effort not to elaborate, when a part of me wanted to.
“Feverhead? I guess that’s why my hands look like spades?” He swiped them around in the air.
“There are side effects. You’ve been hallucinating for days. This is your first lucid conversation.”
It felt odd describing our last five days, which had felt much longer. The elaborate games of distraction and misdirection exhausted me: bribing Tain’s little messenger, Erel, and convincing increasingly irate Councilors that Tain was occupied elsewhere, keeping a handful of his servants and the few Councilors who believed Tain dead assisting us to hide this
“truth” by pretending to have met with him. The climate of fear, suspicion, and hopelessness from which we’d hoped to protect the people of the city now ran rife through our own ranks.
“Do you remember anything about that jar of figs?” I asked. “Who touched it, who offered you one, how Marco and Eliska chose theirs? You were the only one poisoned, so I think it was done on the spot by sleight of hand.”
Tain shook his head, his eyes drooping. “I walked in with both of them,” he said. “I think we met in the gardens on the way to the front door. Argo told me he’d found a few things left by the door. I figured they were part of the food amnesty. I think … I think Eliska looked so excited by the figs that I took them with us. Or was it Marco?” He shook his head again. “I don’t have your memory, Jov, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said, though inside my frustration boiled. These details were critical.
“When we were meeting, I don’t know, I wasn’t going to take one—I could picture your face—but Eliska and Marco had both taken a few, and I’d opened the jar myself, so it just seemed silly.…” He trailed off, face darkening. “Honor-down, Jov, I’m such a fool. They’d never have been able to get me if I hadn’t been such an idiot.”
“So you chose your own?” I asked, ignoring that last comment for fear of saying something I couldn’t take back later.
He nodded. “I opened it, and offered it to both of them. I can’t remember who chose first, but they both took several. The jar was there and open as we worked.”
When I glanced back at Tain, his eyes had shut again. I stood and stretched. Another day. It was hard to even take heart in my friend’s apparent recovery; too much of that was bound up and soured with my guilt and anger about Kalina. And still, any day the rebels could storm the bridge, and it could all come to a head.
“Any change?”
Salvea’s gentle voice interrupted my bleak thoughts. She came into the room with Davior at her knees. Hadrea hovered behind, eyes firmly fixed on her mother. I’d barely seen her for days, and despite my best efforts, I found my gaze sweeping hungrily over her with a longing that alarmed me. Honor-down, I had missed her.
“He’s been awake and lucid,” I told Salvea, my voice squeaky as I dragged my gaze from her daughter. “But he’s fallen asleep again.”
“Did he eat anything?”
“I was so focused on talking to him, I didn’t even think of that,” I admitted. “There’s some broth by the bed I proofed last night.”
She settled herself by the bed, a mound of skirts and calm, and tasted the broth. “It is drinkable cold,” she said. “If he wakes again I will have him attempt it.” She glanced up at her daughter. “Hadrea, was there not something you wished to discuss with Credo Jovan?”
“Just Jovan.” I’d corrected her countless times, but her formal country manners prevailed. I watched Hadrea, my heart rate increasing. If I had known what to say to her, I’d have said it before now. I had nothing to offer. But I wanted … honor-down, I wanted her not to hate me, all the same.
She cleared her throat and I forgot to avoid eye contact. Piercing judgment pinned me to the spot. “I have found something interesting you should see,” she said. Her mouth twitched with cold amusement at the look of surprise that must have passed over my face.
“All right,” I managed, standing.
“Not now. When it is darkest.” She looked me over. “Wear shoes,” she said. Embarrassment swept over me at my disheveled state, but I resisted the temptation to straighten anything.
“I’ll meet you in the hall at midnight.”
That seemed to satisfy Hadrea; she swept from the room without another word. When I turned to rescue some clean—or cleanish, anyway—clothes from the pile I’d brought in from my apartments, Salvea was watching me out of the corner of her eye, but she looked away so quickly I might have imagined it.
* * *
The armor I’d built with clean clothes, a washed face, and combed hair crumpled at the sight of Hadrea waiting for me in the hall outside Tain’s rooms. Dressed country-style again, with tattered layered skirts, an embroidered blouse, and a scarf binding her hair, her composure remained intact as she nodded at me, cool.
“I followed your Stone-Guilder last night,” she said, already walking so I had to trot to catch up. “She went somewhere interesting.”
“You were following Eliska?” I asked. “Why?”
This time she did glance over, so I could fully appreciate the roll of her eyes. “Is she not perhaps your poisoner?”
“Yes. But I didn’t realize you … I mean, I hadn’t asked you to help. I thought—”
“You thought I would not care about catching the murderer, just because you had sex with me and then wished you had not? I am not so selfish. For all your ‘honor,’ you must have little regard for mine.”
And I had thought I couldn’t feel worse. “Hadrea,” I said, catching her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away but instead fixed me with her gaze, cold as a winter pool. “I don’t think you’re selfish. I knew you would be hurt by what I said.” I searched for the right words. Tain would know what to say to turn this around, and so would Kalina. And then the memory of my sister froze over my mind again, and I dropped my hand away. I couldn’t be trusted to look after those who cared about me.
“Then you may rest easy,” she said, “for I am not.” She turned away again, and this time I thought there was a crack in the facade. But she walked so fast it took all my effort just to keep pace. I’d spent the day dodging angry Councilors wanting to speak with Tain—Bradomir had been a particular pain in my rear—and helping dig trenches. I was mentally and physically drained. I followed her, silence brittle between us, all the way down to Red Fern Avenue, the street that ran parallel to the lake shore with the hospital at one end and the bank at the other. The plants that gave it its name sprouted out between the old buildings like wild tufts of bloody hair, fronds colorful even in the darkness.
A memory sprang up, of walking along this street with Lini and Tain on the way to the hospital to receive the autopsy report, weeks ago. Like poking at a wound, the images of them both alive and healthy hurt in a satisfying way. As clear as if it were happening right now, I remembered: a man, a petitioner, had been jostling through the crowd, trying to get Tain’s attention. Thendra had met us and we’d gone with her, and I’d never thought of it again. But now, thanks to the vividness of my dreams over the past few nights, his face was an ordinary stranger’s face no more. The man who had tried to speak to us that day was the man whose head had been in the sack, whose dead eyes and open mouth haunted my dreams. The spy from the southern border whose head had been returned to us with our runners’. My thoughts buzzed, trying to process that connection. What does that mean?
But Hadrea slowed suddenly and jerked me back to the present as she pulled me into a clump of ferns in a crouch. “I followed Eliska here. It was dark, but she looked about often as though suspicious of someone following.” The closeness was distracting; even if I kept my gaze from the graceful curve of her neck, the tangy citrus smell of her skin and memories of the feel of her beneath my hands threatened to swamp me. I took a deep breath, squeezing my hands together and counting in silent sets with each exhalation. “I hid here to watch her, and saw her go into that building.” She pointed across the street to a little tailor’s shop, its commerce long abandoned, its sign crooked and window empty of wares.
“Not long after, someone followed her in,” Hadrea continued. “A woman I did not recognize.”
“Did you see them come out?”
She gave me a sidelong look, almost a smile. “Better.” She glanced up and down the street. Empty. Then she sprang across to the other side so quickly I didn’t even have time to stand. She’d already jimmied the door by the time I caught up.
It was a small shop, the wares long gone and even the leather dummies commandeered as poppets on our walls. The front section, for customers, was no more than a few treads
deep, and separated from the back workshop by a shabby curtain, just cloth, no beading. “What were they doing in here?” I asked, pushing aside the dingy threads and following Hadrea into the workshop. It wasn’t much bigger than the front space, and just as bare, all of the materials and tools taken by the Craft Guild. There was nothing here.
“I waited a few moments after the second woman went inside, then followed,” Hadrea said. “I watched through the window. They went into the back, but did not come out, and I could not hear anything. So I risked the door.”
Out the back, a good moon illuminated an enclosed courtyard with an old woven barrel in one corner and a grill leading down to the sewers in another. The barrel swarmed with fat black flies, crawling over the remnants of whatever refuse had been stored there. I looked around, confused. “There’s not even a way out. What were they doing back here?”
“I wondered the same. Then I heard something below.” Hadrea pointed down and I followed her gaze to the sewer grill. “The sewers?” The cold feeling increased in my chest. It was impossible to imagine an innocent scenario that might have led Eliska into the sewers at night with a mysterious woman. I bent to help Hadrea shift the grill. It should have been welded down but came up easily. Eliska’s the Stone-Guilder, I reminded myself. A bit of metalwork wouldn’t slow her down.
“You stopped here?”
She snorted. “I was quiet,” she said. She dropped her feet into the exposed hole and lowered herself down. I heard a thump and a splash as she landed below. I crouched at the edge, hands clammy with trepidation. There was no ladder. How were we supposed to get back out?
“Come on,” she called, her voice echoing in the tunnel. I took a breath and dropped down. Outside the small circle of light, the tunnel stretched away into blackness. Hadrea’s hand found mine, her grip firm and easy. The intimacy of the gesture surprised me.